


Ruminations and Rum

by Caedmon



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Heavy Angst, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 13:47:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19792138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caedmon/pseuds/Caedmon
Summary: In an alternate universe where Clint obeyed SHIELD's orders and eliminated the Black Widow instead of bringing her in, he wonders what would have happened if he had made a different call.





	Ruminations and Rum

**Author's Note:**

> This is my 200th posted fic on ao3. It seems only fitting that I post the pairing that started everything: Clintasha.

Sometimes he wished that he hadn’t listened to them, that he hadn’t made that shot. 

“The Red Death,” they called her. “The Black Widow.” But all Clint had seen through the scope was a frightened girl with vivid red hair and jade-green eyes that didn’t harbor the life that a girl her age should have, by rights. 

It was those eyes that haunted him even now, all these years later. 

Coulson had sent him to eliminate the target, and Clint Barton was a professional. He’d worked hard for his reputation as not only an unfailing shot but as an unfailing agent. Letting her go, this young Natasha Romanov, would have been unthinkable. He’d done his goddamn job. 

But something about the way she’d looked at him as she crumpled had clung to him like a burr. It was only when he was a full bottle into the good stuff that he could allow himself to acknowledge what he’d seen that night. 

It was gratitude. She’d been thanking him, even as she fell to the ground with his arrow through the shredded remains of her heart and lung. 

_But if she were so desperate to escape,_ his brain liked to ask when thoroughly soused, _if she were so miserable in her life that death would be an improvement worth thanking her murderer, wouldn’t it stand to reason that she would have been even more grateful for another shot? Couldn’t SHIELD have used her? If they feared her so much as an enemy, surely they would have been thrilled with her as a weapon in their arsenal?_

He would never know, nor would anyone else. She was gone. He’d lowered the lids on her sightless eyes himself. 

But sometimes he wished that he hadn’t listened to them, that he’d disobeyed orders. Sometimes, he really wished he hadn’t made that shot.


End file.
